Live at the Belly Up: Joseph (Peaks and Valleys Productions, Belly Up Productions, San Diego State University, KPBS, 2020)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After the feature film my husband Charles and I watched last night, White Savage, I switched back to KPBS for this week’s episode of Live at the Belly Up featuring an act called Joseph. When I first saw the name I assumed Joseph was a single male singer-songwriter, perhaps using just his first name à la Prince, but no-o-o-o-o, Joseph actually turned out to be a band of three sisters, Natalie Schepman and Allison and Meegan Closner. Since their Web site, https://thebandjoseph.com, does not contain a biography page and none of the other online information I’ve been able to find out about them has explained it, I’m not sure why the three sisters have two different last names. Did Matalie get married and start using her husband’s name? (That hardly seems likely for 2019, when this show was filmed.) Or is Natalie, who by her own account on the show’s interstitial interviews is four years older than the others, only a half-sister to the others, the same mother but different fathers? What is quite obvious about Joseph (who maned their band after Joseph, Oregon, where their grandfather lives) is just how good they are. As I joked to my husband Charles (who lasted through the whole show even though he had an early work call today), it’s as if Chrissie Hynde, Pat Benatar and Tori Amos where sisters and started a band together. In one of the interview segments, Natalie also joked about how she both sings and plays guitar, so at least she has something to do with her hands. It’s been a great source of amusement over the years to see how Allison and Meegan have handled the dilemma of what to do with their hands and arms when the trio perform.

They performed 15 songs during the hour-long Live at the Belly Up show, which indicated that they write and perform tightly-knit, well-structured material instead of playing jams. According to Natalie, they began as just a singing trio backed by Natalie’s acoustic guitar, but eventually they moved into rock ‘n’ roll, went electric and hired other musicians, including Will Tandy on second electric guitar and Mike Roibinson on drums. Most of their Live at the Belly Up set came from their latest album, Good Luck, Kid, of which Natalie said in an interview on the Old Town School of Folk Music Web site, https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2022/03-25-2022-joseph/, “The through-line of the album is this idea of moving into the driver's seat of your own life — recognizing that you're the adult now, and everything's up to you from this moment on. You're not completely sure of how to get where you need to go, and you don't have any kind of a map to help you. It's just the universe looking down on you like, ‘Good luck, kid.'” The 15 songs they performed on Live at the Belly Up included “In My Heart,” “Green Eyes,” Half Truths,” “Lifted Away,” “S.O.S.,” Presence,” “Side Effects,” “Breaking Down” (a song which Natalie said had been deliberately arranged with Eagles-style vocal harmonies), “Blood and Tears,” “Shivers,” “White Flag” (as in “Burn a … “), “I Don’t Mind,” “Room for You,” “Fighter,” and “Good Luck, Kid.” While all three sisters have excellent voices, the blonde one (either Allison or Meegan, I don’t know which) has the most convincing rock sound. And they’re all attractive women without looking like concentration-camp survivors the way all too many teenage divas do these days!